‘A Kiss Before the Mirror’ or — Big Time Pre-Code Infidelity?

The message behind ‘A Kiss Before the Mirror’ (1933) is plain and simple — all women are promiscuous nightmares who deserve to be shot and humanity is a pitiful and contemptuous species from which the only escape is total oblivion. Wait, what?!

The film opens with two young lovers preparing for an evening of sexual bliss in each other’s arms.

So this is going to be a light romantic comedy, right?

And then the woman is brutally gunned down by a mysterious man who then calls the police and informs them he’s just murdered his wife. Fortunately his best friend, Paul (Frank Morgan), is a lawyer who thinks he can successfully defend his deranged pal.

So this is going to be a tale about a lawyer winning a seemingly impossible case, right?

Only Paul, on hearing his friend’s recounting of when he started to suspect his wife was having an affair, starts seeing similar behaviour in his OWN wife (an excellent Nancy Carroll) so begins believing he’s also being cheated on.

So this is about a lawyer driven slowly insane by the unfounded paranoia he’s projecting onto his poor, innocent, faithful wife, right?

Only it turns out that his wife IS cheating on him and so the jealousy-riddled Paul becomes determined to prove his friend’s crime was justified not just to save him from execution but so Paul can then legally murder his own wife and get away with it, too!

As you can tell, the plot to ‘A Kiss Before the Mirror’ is outrageously misogynistic, but it’s also outrageously entertaining and fun. That’s because this is pre-code James Whale and there are very few things in the world as darkly delicious as pre-code James Whale, so even though we’re witnessing murderous insanity we’re also giggling with glee at all this despicable behaviour.

A glorious example of this is the scene where Paul visits his friend in prison to tell him his plan — that if he can convince the jury to find him innocent of the killing then that’ll mean Paul will then have the legal grounds to also murder his wife, to which his astonished friend declares to his own defence lawyer “Are you insane?!” And yes, he is. Paul is completely off his rocker.

A lone voice of reason comes in the form of Paul’s assistant, Hilda (Jean Dixon playing her as heavily coded lesbian), who casually suggests that shooting women dead might not be a terribly civilised idea, even if they apparently are all wanton sex maniacs. The implication here seems to be that human beings are fundamentally depraved creatures and everyone’s secretly at it so you can imagine all the married couples on the film’s release sitting in the theatre and glancing nervously at their partners for any give away signs of awkward, guilty fidgeting at what they’re seeing on screen.

The cinematography was by the legendary Karl Freund so the film not only looks ravishing but a highly mobile camera also injects a load of energy into everything, and this combined with a lean 69 minute running time means we’re dealing with one densely packed, good looking, fast moving fucker.

‘A Kiss Before the Mirror’ might not be as well known as Whale’s horror flicks but it’s just as entertaining and a great example of how dangerous (and that’s an understatement here) pre-code films could be. But then again, cinema is frequently at its best when it is morally irresponsible.

All hail pre-code!